Wellspring: Altar of Roots

Wellspring: Altar of Roots is an upcoming tactical turn-based RPG that layers innovative mechanics atop classic role-playing elements, presenting a compelling, deep and mature storyline detailing the tumultuous history of a world and its continent. The idea of Wellspring has existed in a very basic, conceptual form for roughly 20 years, its primary emphases being on plot, lore and character development, as well as combat, customization and progression systems.

While it would be difficult to pigeonhole Wellspring into a single category of RPG, we wanted to extract from each genre its most compelling features. We've always been intensely interested in the mammoth plots and characterization of JRPGs, the spirit, freedom and exploration of WRPGs, as well as the challenging, yet rewarding combat systems traditionally found in tactical RPGs. Wellspring , in many ways, is a union of these fundamental, and yet sometimes disparate gameplay mechanics, the end result being what we believe is a very cohesive and novel experience relative to many existing RPGs. At Multithreaded Games, we aren't looking to churn out the same type of turn-based RPG we've all seen before, nor are we looking to ride on the coattails or imitate any specific game: we have a very unique take on nearly all of our envisioned systems, from combat foremost, to skills, crafting, bestiary systems and much, much more.

Featuring a deep, challenging and innovative turn-based tactical combat system, much of the tension revolves around the many ways in which characters can master the nuances of their available skills and equipment setups to best dispatch the highly intelligent enemies they will encounter. We do away with grid-based movement and allow the party unbridled range of motion upon the battlefield. Using its dynamic targeting and movement systems, the player can check the outcome of any action from any position. If an action appears, it can be taken and there is no randomness to suddenly snuff out what would be an otherwise strategically-sound decision. Whereas movement is a thin veil of complexity in many RPGs, positioning in Wellspring is of the utmost importance and can easily be the downfall of an ill-prepared party.

In addition to keenly positioning your characters, special care must be paid to the types of skills and number of turns spent charging required by each one. While a skill may be powerful, it might not be worth the time to charge it, but in other cases, quick jabs might give enemies time to build up their own devastating skills. To add another layer of strategy, skills can be executed in rapid succession against a single target to deal even more damage. Enemies, however, are perfectly capable and willing to exploit this to their advantage as well.

Plot progression is driven by a tightly-written and mythology-deep storyline that has been decades in the making and is codified in many short stories, maps, sketches and even its own wiki. Not only is the main story-line arc of the game solidified, but so too is the extensive history and setting in which the game occurs. Featuring a welcome return to navigation upon a true world map and a questing system urging quality over quantity, you'll join a maturely-written cast of characters and the stranger among them looking to maybe stave off the looming calamity… or unwittingly hasten its arrival.

We've played our fair share of role-playing games and grew up during what we would argue were the golden years of RPGs, churning out such behemoths as Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy Tactics and many, many more. While it could be argued endlessly as to which one truly wore the crown, each one presented some embedded piece of wisdom. We hope Wellspring will go down as a worthy successor to the ideas presented in the many masterpieces that came before us. Having the resolve, knowledge, experience and passion to see the game through to its completion, we are more than equipped to make this desire a reality.

Sorry for taking so long to respond to this, btw--saving/loading should be implemented properly in the most recent demo. In order to save your game, you'll need to approach one of the large blue crystals (there should be one very close to the starting position, just a little bit ahead)

Once next to it, you can interact with it to save your progress. These save crystals are also marked on the minimap itself and look, basically, like crystals--as you might expect! :)

I assume you are using the actual Itch.io app to download and install the game, correct? We have not used it before, but are currently installing it to see if we can replicate your problem.

Based on the error message, it looks like the Itch app itself is changing the directory of certain required installation files. Where it shows '/itch/apps' in your path, it should really say 'LiminalLLC', so I am certain that this is part of the problem.

In the meantime, while we investigate, you might try downloading the installer separately (without the Itch.io app) and try re-running it. If I'm mistaken and you aren't using the app, then disregard all of this--either way, we're looking into the issue and we'll let you know as soon as we find something.

Hey Amos, thanks for checking this out for us! We've actually got our eyes on a new demo, which'll be released very shortly. We'll keep your suggestions in mind! I actually much prefer not having to deal with an installer personally, so being able to upload just a ZIP file will be nice and convenient! Thanks again.

Hi there! Sorry to bump this old thread--we've uploaded our newest build per your previous suggestion and while it can be downloaded as a zip and ran within the directory, I'm having trouble downloading and installing it from the itch.io app. Specifically, it seems to download properly, but cancels sometime during the install, at which point, I can repeatedly attempt to install it, but it never seems to 'finish.' Can you please take a look at this and tell me what I'm doing wrong, if possible? Thanks!

Hi ahmed, sorry you're having problems. I have not personally seen that error myself and I think the only way we can figure out what is happening is if you provide us the log file. Here is how to access it:

1.) Press (WINDOWS KEY + R) or alternatively, click on the windows icon at the bottom left of the screen and type "Run" (without the quotes), then press ENTER.

2.) Enter this into the prompt (without the quotes): "%userprofile%\appdata\locallow\LiminalLLC\Bevontule"

3.) Once that opens up the folder, you can select the output_log.txt file and open it up. Please send this file to our support email address at admin@mtgamestudio.com and we can take a look at it to see what might be causing your problem.

Hey Ahmed, it looks like the logfile you sent us is possibly for a different game/application. This could be my mistake for providing you the 'path' to type into your prompt, which may not work, for whatever reason, on all setups. Please try to send the file again--assuming Bevontule installed correctly, the file we need should be located in a folder where the actual path looks like this:

C:\Users\<your_user_name>\AppData\LocalLow\LiminalLLC\Bevontule

That output_log file should be more than 1KB in length as well.

Additionally, you can always try right-clicking on the .exe and selecting "Run as administrator", but I'm not sure if this will help the problem.

Sorry you're having problems running it--we'll figure out what the problem is as soon as we can!

Awesome, glad to hear that it worked! I hope you enjoy it and I'd be thrilled if you wanted to record a gameplay video of it. I do want to mention that it is actually several months old and as such, we've even made a HUGE number of improvements since then!

Feel free to have a look at our different social media pages (Facebook, Twitter) if you want to follow our development! Take care.